WEBVTT NOTE Colonial America and the American Revolution 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:30.000 and over the next hour and since I remember I've taken undergraduate and graduate courses in both the colonial period and the American Revolution this will have to be a bit abbreviated but I hope to raise at least a few themes that I think are useful and even indispensable in understanding this period and I begin by noting I don't think professor Livingston is is here that's a shame okay that's alright well because I don't know if the point that I'm going to attribute to him 2 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:47.000 Professor Livingston's point is that we sometimes use the term founders, the founders of the United States, to refer to the founding generation and the great men who founded the country. 3 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:53.000 But there's something misleading about this word because obviously the United States wasn't just in an instant founded out of nothing, out of whole cloth. 4 00:00:53.000 --> 00:00:57.000 It obviously owes something to the colonial inheritance. 5 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:27.000 And I just came across a book and I'm going to mention it to you even though you'll never find it because it's from 1897 but it's a book that's extremely interesting on the topic of where the Constitution came from and it's a book that explores the colonial inheritance and the book is by Sydney George Fisher and it's called, this is the title, I love these 19th century titles, The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States, showing that it is a development 6 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:32.000 of Progressive History and Not an Isolated Document Struck Off at a Given Time. 7 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:38.000 So in a sense you don't even need to read the book after you hear that. 8 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:44.000 But the author goes through 29 colonial charters and constitutions, 17 revolutionary constitutions, 9 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:51.000 23 plans of union in order to derive the constitution that we have now. 10 00:01:51.000 --> 00:02:01.000 So, in fact, if we discuss where American liberty comes from, you have to start not just with the 1780s, but look back into the colonial period. 11 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:12.000 Now, some of you may be familiar with a book by David Hackett Fisher. It's enormous, 800 or 900 pages, called Albion Seed, Four British Folkways in America. 12 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:19.000 We're almost tired of hearing about it, even though it's a great book, and just have a few sentences on that and then jump right in. 13 00:02:19.000 --> 00:02:34.000 In Fisher's book, he argues that in a sense you can see four discrete waves of migration to the United States, and we're talking 17th and 18th centuries here. 14 00:02:34.000 --> 00:02:42.000 And he's talking about roughly the period from 1629 through 1775 is the period that he looks at most closely. 15 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:54.500 Closely. Beginning with the emigration of English Puritans from the east of England to Massachusetts Bay and concluding with the stirrings of revolution, four distinct geographical regions of England we can see. 16 00:02:54.500 --> 00:03:06.500 So after the Puritans, Fisher identifies as a second group a small putative aristocracy and a sizable number of indentured servants originating in the south of England who made their way to Virginia. 17 00:03:06.500 --> 00:03:11.500 The third migration originated in the North Midlands of England and Wales and terminated in the Delaware Valley 18 00:03:11.500 --> 00:03:18.500 later in the 17th century going into the 18th, and finally from approximately 1718 through 1775 19 00:03:18.500 --> 00:03:23.500 a fourth group consisting of immigrants from the borders of North Britain and Northern Ireland 20 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:25.500 made their way to the Appalachian back country. 21 00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:31.500 Now obviously all these groups share a number of obvious and important traits in common. 22 00:03:31.500 --> 00:03:34.500 They hailed from the same part of Europe, obviously. 23 00:03:34.500 --> 00:03:40.500 They spoke a common language, and at least in a broad sense, they all shared the same religion. 24 00:03:40.500 --> 00:03:47.500 Interestingly, in the Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 2, one of the few that John Jay wrote, 25 00:03:47.500 --> 00:03:50.500 John Jay, of course, became the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 26 00:03:50.500 --> 00:03:58.500 John Jay cited these shared common characteristics as one of the factors that made the American Union possible. 27 00:03:58.500 --> 00:04:26.500 Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs. 28 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:29.500 So you notice he's saying the exact opposite of diversity is our strength. 29 00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:32.300 He's saying, just the opposite, sameness is our strength. 30 00:04:32.300 --> 00:04:37.600 This would have been, this Aurelian statement would have been completely incomprehensible to him, of course. 31 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:42.100 But the notable thing about Fisher's book is that he notes, yes, there are these basic similarities, 32 00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:47.700 but that a lot of times what the colonies noticed about themselves was how different they were from each other. 33 00:04:47.700 --> 00:04:53.000 For instance, in the mid-17th century, one Puritan, speaking of Virginians, declared them, quote, 34 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:59.800 The farthest from conscience and moral honesty of any such number together in the world. 35 00:04:59.800 --> 00:05:05.200 Likewise, the Virginian William Byrd, referring to the Puritans, warned a correspondent, 36 00:05:05.200 --> 00:05:11.200 A watchful eye must be kept upon these foul traitors. 37 00:05:11.200 --> 00:05:15.500 And the two groups in turn shared a dislike of the Quakers. 38 00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:20.900 And it reminds me, I had a, my college roommate was a Mormon who went on his mission in the, 39 00:05:20.900 --> 00:05:28.900 In the former Yugoslavia, people over there don't like each other, but I'm sure they can all agree they don't like the Mormons. 40 00:05:28.900 --> 00:05:31.900 Good luck, have fun over there. 41 00:05:31.900 --> 00:05:37.900 But it was frequently said that the Society of Friends, as the Quakers were known, 42 00:05:37.900 --> 00:05:43.900 would, quote, pray for their fellow men one day a week and on them the other six. 43 00:05:43.900 --> 00:06:13.900 Likewise, the Quakers returned the favor, and here's what I like, the Quakers, I don't know how many of you know much about them, they're sort of a left-wing, in a sense a left-wing Puritan sect, the Puritans are people who think the Anglicans, I don't know how many of you know anything about Protestant or Christian denominations, I mean I know about them but that's because I'm a strange person, but the Anglicans have not de-Catholicized fast enough for the Puritans, the Puritans want, you know, at least, and there are other theological 44 00:06:13.900 --> 00:06:16.900 The Quakers think the Puritans have not purified enough. 45 00:06:16.900 --> 00:06:20.900 The Quakers will have their services not even in a church, in a meeting house, 46 00:06:20.900 --> 00:06:23.900 and sometimes the whole meeting, no one will speak. 47 00:06:23.900 --> 00:06:25.900 And they would consider that satisfactory. 48 00:06:25.900 --> 00:06:27.900 You speak when you're moved to speak. 49 00:06:27.900 --> 00:06:29.900 It's very egalitarian. 50 00:06:29.900 --> 00:06:34.900 So for them, the Puritans are just an outrage, just barbaric that they would have 51 00:06:34.900 --> 00:06:37.900 these backward customs of a structured, 52 00:06:37.900 --> 00:06:45.400 and just an outrage, just barbaric that they would have these backward customs of a structured sort of liturgy. 53 00:06:45.400 --> 00:06:50.400 And even though the Quakers believed in religious toleration, the principle of religious toleration, 54 00:06:50.400 --> 00:06:53.900 that doesn't mean they were wimps. They believed you should be a Quaker. 55 00:06:53.900 --> 00:07:00.900 So before Pennsylvania was founded, which is where, of course, a lot of the Quakers eventually moved beginning in the 1680s, 56 00:07:00.900 --> 00:07:04.900 some of the Quakers had started to come to the colonies, in particular Rhode Island, 57 00:07:34.900 --> 00:07:40.500 up and down the church aisles to rile these people up about their dogmatic religion and 58 00:07:40.500 --> 00:07:41.500 the need to... 59 00:07:41.500 --> 00:07:44.900 And you can just imagine these sort of staid Puritans wondering, who the hell are these 60 00:07:44.900 --> 00:07:47.140 damn people, right? 61 00:07:47.140 --> 00:07:51.860 So in Massachusetts, they didn't know what to do with these people. 62 00:07:51.860 --> 00:07:57.380 And by the late 1650s, very reluctantly, the Puritans in Massachusetts actually by one 63 00:07:57.380 --> 00:08:03.060 vote passed the death penalty for Quakers who came up and were disruptive. 64 00:08:03.060 --> 00:08:07.860 And they reluctantly did this, because the problem is they kept making the penalty worse and worse, 65 00:08:07.860 --> 00:08:12.260 but that made the Quakers come in greater and greater numbers. They were seeking martyrdom. 66 00:08:12.260 --> 00:08:15.660 So they, you know, they cut off people's ears and they would still come back. 67 00:08:15.660 --> 00:08:21.860 So finally they went with the death penalty, and my favorite story is of Mary Dyer from an island who went up there. 68 00:08:21.860 --> 00:08:25.460 She went up to the mass grave several times. They kept throwing her out, get out of here, get out of here. 69 00:08:25.460 --> 00:08:29.060 Well, one of the times she was up there, she was with two male companions. 70 00:08:29.060 --> 00:08:34.860 I don't know what the circumstances were, but she's with her two male companions, and she's causing problems. 71 00:08:34.860 --> 00:08:39.740 So the Massachusetts authorities sentenced her and the companions to death. 72 00:08:39.740 --> 00:08:46.020 So they're led to the scaffold. Her two male companions are executed in front of her, and now it is her turn. 73 00:08:46.020 --> 00:08:51.340 And again, they beg her, you know, please, just leave, and we won't kill you. 74 00:08:51.340 --> 00:08:54.540 They were very uncomfortable executing a woman. Just get out of here. 75 00:08:54.540 --> 00:08:58.340 She said, no, no, no, I must stay here and protest this unjust law against the Quakers. 76 00:08:58.340 --> 00:09:00.500 Well, they finally said, all right, look, we just get out of here. 77 00:09:00.500 --> 00:09:01.260 They just pushed her out. 78 00:09:01.260 --> 00:09:02.380 They literally threw her out. 79 00:09:02.380 --> 00:09:03.140 Get out. 80 00:09:03.140 --> 00:09:04.420 And then she came back again. 81 00:09:04.420 --> 00:09:07.340 And finally, they said, all right, this time, we have to execute her. 82 00:09:07.340 --> 00:09:08.340 Unbelievable. 83 00:09:08.340 --> 00:09:11.820 So this is the situation that they're faced with. 84 00:09:11.820 --> 00:09:15.780 The fact is, they just don't care for each other a lot of times 85 00:09:15.780 --> 00:09:17.900 in the colonies. 86 00:09:17.900 --> 00:09:21.740 As late as 1795, one Quaker referred to New England in general 87 00:09:21.740 --> 00:09:23.660 as the flock of cane. 88 00:09:23.660 --> 00:09:26.340 So what I'm getting at with all this is that the fact that they 89 00:09:26.340 --> 00:09:33.340 The fact that we don't like each other is actually very fortuitous, because it means, as one of the points that Fisher later makes in his book, 90 00:09:33.340 --> 00:09:40.340 he didn't make all of these peculiar points, but one of the points that he makes in his book is that when it comes time to make a constitution, 91 00:09:40.340 --> 00:09:45.340 nobody wants the Quakers to have any authority over them or New England or anything else. 92 00:09:45.340 --> 00:09:51.340 So in fact, you get a fairly laissez-faire approach in various areas of life. 93 00:09:51.340 --> 00:09:59.340 For example, very often we hear about, at the Constitutional Convention, there's a struggle between the small states and the large states. 94 00:09:59.340 --> 00:10:06.340 Fisher says, yeah, that's moderately interesting, but what's also interesting is the competing regional cultures that are at work, 95 00:10:06.340 --> 00:10:10.340 all these different cultures that are sometimes mutually antagonistic. How are they dealt with? 96 00:10:10.340 --> 00:10:17.340 So when we look, for instance, at the First Amendment, and I promise I won't be treading upon Professor Livingston's Constitution talk, 97 00:10:17.340 --> 00:10:29.340 The First Amendment is written in deceptively simple language, and yet, says Fisher, it entails a regional compromise of the highest complexity. 98 00:10:29.340 --> 00:10:36.340 Because on the one hand, you want to preserve the religious liberty of Virginia and of Pennsylvania, 99 00:10:36.340 --> 00:10:40.340 but at the same time, New England is not going to let you encroach upon their established churches. 100 00:10:40.340 --> 00:10:44.340 So what position does the Constitution take? None whatsoever. 101 00:10:44.340 --> 00:10:48.460 make up your own decisions, we're not going to impose uniformity on you. 102 00:10:48.460 --> 00:10:52.380 So in a sense, precisely because of the mutual antagonism, the differences, 103 00:10:52.380 --> 00:10:55.260 the response of the Constitution is silence. 104 00:10:55.260 --> 00:10:59.500 And so that's why I say that their mutual dislike 105 00:10:59.500 --> 00:11:04.140 to know them is to hate them, to quote an eminent Austrian economist, 106 00:11:04.140 --> 00:11:08.020 was in fact fortuitous. Now obviously there's much more than mutual 107 00:11:08.020 --> 00:11:09.140 antagonism 108 00:11:09.140 --> 00:11:13.260 going on here that accounts for American liberty. 109 00:11:13.260 --> 00:11:30.860 There is the fact that the American colonists did not see themselves as having some kind of a utopian task of remaking the whole world, and they were immensely practical men. 110 00:11:30.860 --> 00:11:37.660 Now it's true, you can cite a few people to the contrary, that's true. 111 00:11:37.660 --> 00:11:41.780 But when you compare the Americans to the French, the French Revolutionaries, for instance, 112 00:11:41.780 --> 00:11:45.900 the Americans are not going to establish a new calendar, a brand new calendar. 113 00:11:45.900 --> 00:11:50.940 Well, let's date everything from the year one when we first started, I don't know, executing Quakers or something. 114 00:11:50.940 --> 00:11:54.460 We'll start the calendar then, and it just wouldn't have occurred to them to do that. 115 00:11:54.460 --> 00:12:01.100 And Professor Reiko mentioned that I've got this collection of writings of Rufus Choate coming out. 116 00:12:01.100 --> 00:12:06.700 Nobody knows who he is. He was a Daniel Webster clone in Massachusetts. 117 00:12:06.700 --> 00:12:11.820 and but Rufus Choate, it was a mid 19th century observer who wrote about the colonial period 118 00:12:11.820 --> 00:12:15.820 and he looked back at it and he said here's something very noteworthy about the colonial period 119 00:12:16.460 --> 00:12:20.620 so I have this passage from Choate. There was another great work which they, meaning the 120 00:12:20.620 --> 00:12:26.060 colonists, had to do and that was to establish their system of colonial government, to frame 121 00:12:26.060 --> 00:12:30.860 their code of internal law and to administer the vast and perplexing political business of the 122 00:12:30.860 --> 00:12:35.500 colonies in their novel and trying relations to England through the whole colonial age. 123 00:12:35.500 --> 00:12:41.500 Of all their labors, this was the grandest, the most intellectual, the best calculated to fit them for independence. 124 00:12:41.500 --> 00:12:50.500 Consider how much patient thought, how much observation of man and life, how much sagacity, how much communication of mind with mind, 125 00:12:50.500 --> 00:12:59.500 how many general councils, plots, and marshalling of affairs, how much slow accumulation, how much careful transmission of wisdom that labor demanded. 126 00:12:59.500 --> 00:13:04.500 And what a school of civil capacity this must have proved to them who partook in it. 127 00:13:04.500 --> 00:13:13.000 Hence, I think, the sober, rational and practical views and conduct which distinguished even the first fervent years of the Revolutionary Age. 128 00:13:13.000 --> 00:13:16.500 How little giddiness, rant and foolery do you see there. 129 00:13:16.500 --> 00:13:21.500 No riotous and shouting processions, no grand festivals of the goddess of reason. 130 00:13:21.500 --> 00:13:23.500 I wonder what he's talking about there. 131 00:13:23.500 --> 00:13:32.500 No impious dream of human perfectibility, no unloosing of the hoarded up passions of ages from the restraints of law, order, morality and religion. 132 00:13:32.500 --> 00:13:38.500 and then he becomes frank, such as shamed and frightened away the newborn liberty of revolutionary France. 133 00:13:38.500 --> 00:13:43.500 Hence, our victories of peace were more brilliant, more beneficial than our victories of war. 134 00:13:43.500 --> 00:13:47.500 So they were practical people. Now it's true, you read the Puritans, 135 00:13:47.500 --> 00:13:51.500 and John Winthrop uses the biblical city on a hill analogy. 136 00:13:51.500 --> 00:13:53.500 I always love listening to neoconservatives who say, 137 00:13:53.500 --> 00:13:57.500 as Ronald Reagan said, we are a city on a hill. 138 00:13:57.500 --> 00:14:08.500 Yeah, he said that. Anyway, when he says that, he doesn't mean we're a city on a hill, then we're going to run around the world and, you know, hillify the rest of the world. 139 00:14:08.500 --> 00:14:15.500 The purpose of the city on a hill analogy, imagery, was to say that we will be visible to the rest of the world. 140 00:14:15.500 --> 00:14:25.500 They can see our example of what a peaceful social order we have and prosperity we have when we follow the Bible in the way that we think right. 141 00:14:25.500 --> 00:14:40.500 It was not meant to be something that would be an image, an imperialistic image, but of course later, when the later generations of Puritans had lost their faith, and all they had were the slogans, like John Dewey. 142 00:14:40.500 --> 00:14:48.500 John Dewey is raised in a typical Protestant church, and he loves the bake sales and the dances, the picnics, but he doesn't believe in God. 143 00:14:48.500 --> 00:14:52.500 So he wants to keep having the picnics and the bake sales and everything else. 144 00:14:52.500 --> 00:14:58.500 So those people use this kind of Puritan language in a way that it was not intended to be used. 145 00:14:58.500 --> 00:15:02.500 I have to say some nice things about Massachusetts. I come from there. 146 00:15:02.500 --> 00:15:08.500 Now it's true. I'm not saying you would want to have lived in Massachusetts in the 17th century. 147 00:15:08.500 --> 00:15:13.500 You might get thrown out. They would throw you out if you didn't conform to... 148 00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:23.500 If you lived in New England town, and they weren't going to go into your home and ask about the inner workings of your conscience. That was private. 149 00:15:23.500 --> 00:15:31.500 But in Massachusetts, of course, I'm not sure how much you know about this, but obviously it was somewhat theocratic. 150 00:15:31.500 --> 00:15:36.500 In order to be able to vote, not that voting is everything, but you had to be a church member. 151 00:15:36.500 --> 00:16:06.500 in order to be a church member you had to be in effect interviewed by about seven what were called pillars of the church and they would sit you down and ask you questions and they would want to know about your conversion experience and they would want to know you know and if this seemed persuasive to them and it seemed to them as if you were one of the elect God had chosen to go to heaven then you would become a church member even if you didn't get chosen to be a church member you still had to go to church because that might be just the thing for you would be sort of their 152 00:16:06.500 --> 00:16:13.500 So that's true. But on the other hand, and there was something sort of utopian about their little communities. 153 00:16:13.500 --> 00:16:18.500 For instance, the dead of Massachusetts, still in existence, their covenant. 154 00:16:18.500 --> 00:16:27.500 Part of what their covenant said was that we shall by all means labor to keep off from us all such as are contrary minded 155 00:16:27.500 --> 00:16:31.500 and receive only such unto us as may probably be of one heart with us. 156 00:16:31.500 --> 00:16:52.500 The idea is that we would have a community that would be of one mind, and I happen to think that much as I'm not sympathetic to this form of Protestantism, I think a lot of what John Winthrop wrote about his vision of the community is rather beautiful, so, you know, throw me in jail or something. 157 00:16:52.500 --> 00:17:03.500 Anyway, but on the other hand, there is, so we all know about this community aspect of New England life, and that sometimes it could be stifling, and that yes, they would throw Roger Williams out or whatever. 158 00:17:03.500 --> 00:17:19.500 But on the other hand, we should take, for instance, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, 1641, is a significant document that shows that on the other hand, there was a concern for individual rights and for limitation of state power. 159 00:17:19.500 --> 00:17:26.500 What's notable about this is that the long-time governor of Massachusetts Bay was John Winthrop. 160 00:17:26.500 --> 00:17:34.500 And Winthrop's view was that there should be as little written law as possible, 161 00:17:34.500 --> 00:17:43.500 because he thought the less written law there is, the more discretion he and his judges will have in applying the Bible into particular cases. 162 00:17:43.500 --> 00:17:52.500 So that meant, now John Winthrop was, you know, a reasonable person, but that meant you had to trust John Winthrop quite a lot and his judges. 163 00:17:52.500 --> 00:18:03.500 And much as people of Massachusetts obviously respected him, they kept voting him back in, they voted him out temporarily because they realized this discretion is simply too great. 164 00:18:03.500 --> 00:18:10.500 We would like to have some kind of a written description of what our rights are. And so you get the Massachusetts body of liberties. 165 00:18:10.500 --> 00:18:19.500 Now, there are over a hundred provisions of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, and they include items that are familiar to the student of British law and politics. 166 00:18:19.500 --> 00:18:32.500 So, in the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, there are things like no taxation without representation, the right to a jury trial, the guarantee that no person would be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. 167 00:18:32.500 --> 00:18:38.700 Law. It also contains a sort of peculiar provision prohibiting wife beating excepting when the 168 00:18:38.700 --> 00:18:48.620 husband is acting in self-defense, interestingly. Kind of an odd thing to mention. Now, in Jack 169 00:18:48.620 --> 00:18:54.700 Green, who is one of the great colonial historians, has a book called Pursuits of Happiness in 170 00:18:54.700 --> 00:19:00.740 which he argues that if you look at the colonies, there's a sort of a continuum with some of 171 00:19:00.740 --> 00:19:08.740 I saw them on one side beginning as very community-oriented and other ones being much more individualistic. 172 00:19:08.740 --> 00:19:14.740 So for instance, New England in its first several generations would fall on the first category 173 00:19:14.740 --> 00:19:18.740 because that was a self-consciously family-oriented migration. 174 00:19:18.740 --> 00:19:21.740 It wasn't just a bunch of single guys moving to Massachusetts. 175 00:19:21.740 --> 00:19:28.740 These were families who moved there and they had strong community identity and so on and so forth. 176 00:19:28.740 --> 00:19:33.820 Whereas, on the other hand, you had colonies like Virginia, which I'll say a few things 177 00:19:33.820 --> 00:19:36.600 about in a second, that start off just the opposite. 178 00:19:36.600 --> 00:19:41.900 That did start off mainly as single men, just a bunch of single men going to Virginia. 179 00:19:41.900 --> 00:19:46.080 And as you can probably expect, that worked out just great, the first generation or so. 180 00:19:46.080 --> 00:19:47.080 No problems there. 181 00:19:47.080 --> 00:19:51.120 Only half of them died. 182 00:19:51.120 --> 00:19:54.900 And the thing is that because Virginia, the first generation or so, there was disease 183 00:19:54.900 --> 00:20:04.900 The Death Trap and the Chesapeake 184 00:20:24.900 --> 00:20:34.900 The Pressure of a Growing Population 185 00:20:54.900 --> 00:21:24.900 The cohesive community type colony is going to begin to dissipate in a certain way, whereas on the other hand, Virginia that had started off sort of like this, as it becomes prosperous and they realize that tobacco seems like a great source of prosperity, people begin to move there, it becomes more cohesive, more settled, and you get a kind of an aristocracy there that is very, very committed to self-government and local liberties. 186 00:21:24.900 --> 00:21:34.900 In fact, in Virginia, they are so dedicated to their local, every time they speak about my country, of course, they mean Virginia. 187 00:21:34.900 --> 00:21:44.900 They're so committed to this that, for instance, the House of Burgesses, the Legislative Assembly, which was the first representative assembly, which was established in 1619, 188 00:21:44.900 --> 00:21:54.900 In the House of Burgesses in Virginia, it was actually a law that if you were a member of the House of Burgesses, every member had to be present, especially for the opening session. 189 00:21:54.900 --> 00:22:03.900 So it was kind of a sense that we have a special responsibility toward the people and toward our local area. 190 00:22:03.900 --> 00:22:07.900 And I always mention poor James Bray in 1691. 191 00:22:07.900 --> 00:22:20.900 The House of Burgesses was so offended by his explanation for his absence that a warrant for his arrest was actually issued and he was held in custody until he made an apology because he was not there the first time. 192 00:22:20.900 --> 00:22:29.900 So this, you know, is kind of an anecdotal way of illustrating the attachment that the Virginians had to their locality. 193 00:22:29.900 --> 00:22:37.900 And that's worth noting. Even Daniel Boorstin, who's sort of a neoconish type historian, has this to say about them. 194 00:22:37.900 --> 00:22:42.900 And this is very important. When he says they, he's talking about the Virginians. 195 00:22:42.900 --> 00:22:46.900 Their localism has been given far too little attention and too little credit. 196 00:22:46.900 --> 00:22:56.900 In these days, when states' rights are out of fashion, we are too often told that a man's preoccupation with the habits of the place where he lives can only drag the national progress. 197 00:22:56.900 --> 00:23:00.900 We are fortunate that 18th century Virginians thought differently. 198 00:23:00.900 --> 00:23:04.900 Their concern with the special requirements of their own particular place on earth 199 00:23:04.900 --> 00:23:07.900 not only flavored their political life and expectations, 200 00:23:07.900 --> 00:23:11.900 it also gave all their thinking the aroma of the specific 201 00:23:11.900 --> 00:23:15.900 and kept all their social ideals within finite bounds. 202 00:23:15.900 --> 00:23:21.900 So again, the utopian sentiment is nowhere to be found that tends to be so mischievous. 203 00:23:21.900 --> 00:23:24.900 So therefore, what I'm getting at is that the colonies succeeded on the one hand 204 00:23:24.900 --> 00:23:29.860 on the one hand in providing the individual liberty that makes a rational and civilized 205 00:23:29.860 --> 00:23:35.820 life possible, while at the same time cultivating a corporate sentiment that provided a source 206 00:23:35.820 --> 00:23:40.780 of resistance to centralizing and consolidationist schemes. 207 00:23:40.780 --> 00:23:45.700 Remember Professor Livingston's point about the tendency of the modern state to want to 208 00:23:45.700 --> 00:23:49.980 flatten out all of these things, well it was not easy to flatten these things out. 209 00:23:49.980 --> 00:23:55.300 I would just mention very quickly the classical liberal Benjamin Constant, a great figure, 210 00:23:55.300 --> 00:24:00.380 had this to say about the importance of the kind of local institutions that were being 211 00:24:00.380 --> 00:24:02.580 built up in the colonies. 212 00:24:02.580 --> 00:24:07.220 The interests and memories which are born of local customs contain a germ of resistance 213 00:24:07.220 --> 00:24:12.720 which authority suffers only with regret and which it hastens to eradicate. 214 00:24:12.720 --> 00:24:15.360 With individuals it has its way more easily. 215 00:24:15.360 --> 00:24:32.360 The French revolutionaries, of course, despised the local customs and particularities that dotted their country's landscape and reorganized France into arbitrary departments that bore no relation to its historic regions. 216 00:24:32.360 --> 00:24:39.360 In our own century, the deliberate and coordinated destruction of local institutions and intermediary associations 217 00:24:39.360 --> 00:24:42.860 has been a principal weapon of various totalitarian systems 218 00:24:42.860 --> 00:24:45.860 in eliminating potential sources of resistance. 219 00:24:45.860 --> 00:24:48.360 Hitler, of course, despised German federalism, 220 00:24:48.360 --> 00:24:52.360 which he correctly perceived as an obstacle to his consolidation of power. 221 00:24:52.360 --> 00:24:55.860 Stalin, for his part, attempted to starve Ukraine into submission 222 00:24:55.860 --> 00:24:58.860 when standard Soviet propaganda proved insufficient 223 00:24:58.860 --> 00:25:01.860 to divest it of its traditional national feeling. 224 00:25:01.860 --> 00:25:04.860 In the soft totalitarianism of social democracy, 225 00:25:04.860 --> 00:25:08.360 we have seen how our own government has abetted social upheavals 226 00:25:08.360 --> 00:25:11.360 at the local level in order to strengthen its control everywhere. 227 00:25:11.360 --> 00:25:15.360 I'll have more to say about that later in the week. 228 00:25:15.360 --> 00:25:17.360 Okay, there are a million other things. 229 00:25:17.360 --> 00:25:18.360 We're going to move on. Let's see. 230 00:25:18.360 --> 00:25:20.360 I think I'm doing okay on time. I'm doing all right. 231 00:25:20.360 --> 00:25:22.360 Okay, good. Okay. 232 00:25:22.360 --> 00:25:26.360 In fact, now is a good time for some water. 233 00:25:26.360 --> 00:25:28.360 Talk amongst yourselves. 234 00:25:28.360 --> 00:25:31.360 Okay, I'm ready. 235 00:25:31.360 --> 00:25:36.360 Another theme to note about all this that relates to the building up of local institutions is that 236 00:25:36.360 --> 00:25:44.360 is that from the beginning we see the colonies being extremely suspicious of any kind of confederation, right from the beginning. 237 00:25:44.360 --> 00:25:51.360 I can think of three examples off the top of my head, because I've sort of given a similar talk before, sort of why it's on the top of my head, 238 00:25:51.360 --> 00:26:01.360 but I can give three examples of confederations that were or were not entered into, and that reveal something about the Americans at this time, 239 00:26:01.360 --> 00:26:10.360 at this time, how suspicious they were about, you know, would their rights be taken away from them if they entered into a confederation for some good purpose? 240 00:26:10.360 --> 00:26:20.360 So, for instance, it was only belatedly that the Puritans entered into an inter-colonial alliance, the so-called Confederation of New England. 241 00:26:20.360 --> 00:26:29.360 Persistent rumors of Indian hostilities and ongoing suspicions of the Narragansett tribe in particular led the colonies to consider this move. 242 00:26:29.360 --> 00:26:34.360 And yet, in the classic American tradition, the colonists kept a close watch on this confederation. 243 00:26:35.360 --> 00:26:43.360 So, for instance, New England had lived without incident for some years in increasing proximity to New Netherland. 244 00:26:43.360 --> 00:26:48.360 But when in 1652 Cromwell attacked the Netherlands and the two mother countries were thus at war, 245 00:26:48.360 --> 00:26:53.360 the possibility of a colonial clash with each side arming its Indian allies worried New Englanders. 246 00:26:53.360 --> 00:26:57.360 And Connecticut and New Haven began to beat the drums for war and said, 247 00:26:57.360 --> 00:27:02.840 This is what the Confederation of New England was made for, to go and prevent these things 248 00:27:02.840 --> 00:27:03.840 from happening. 249 00:27:03.840 --> 00:27:07.860 And yet it was at this moment that Massachusetts, who was a member of the Confederation, stood 250 00:27:07.860 --> 00:27:12.520 up and questioned the right of the Confederation to declare offensive war. 251 00:27:12.520 --> 00:27:14.540 This was not the understanding that we had. 252 00:27:14.540 --> 00:27:18.360 And they absolutely, in a sense, used an early form of nullification, said, we're not going 253 00:27:18.360 --> 00:27:25.440 to obey this plan of the Confederation to launch a preventive war. 254 00:27:25.440 --> 00:27:31.240 So right away, you see a colony keeping watch over a confederation, rising up against it, 255 00:27:31.240 --> 00:27:37.040 refusing to go along, and containing that great American spirit that is still so present 256 00:27:37.040 --> 00:27:42.120 in our population today. 257 00:27:42.120 --> 00:27:43.120 I was being sarcastic. 258 00:27:43.120 --> 00:27:51.280 I'm sorry, that's from the Simpsons, actually, but I'll give you that story later. 259 00:27:51.280 --> 00:27:56.320 Likewise, also, there is another example, the Dominion of New England, now this was 260 00:27:56.320 --> 00:28:02.720 a confederation that was imposed on the colonies, partly in an effort to make sure that British 261 00:28:02.720 --> 00:28:10.680 trade regulations would be enforced more effectively, and partly out of a concern, supposedly, for 262 00:28:10.680 --> 00:28:16.560 the colony's defense against New France, King James II in the 1680s established the Dominion 263 00:28:16.560 --> 00:28:21.580 of New England. So he took Massachusetts, and Maine, and New Hampshire, and then later 264 00:28:21.580 --> 00:28:27.960 other colonies, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and others, and formed them into 265 00:28:27.960 --> 00:28:33.120 one government with one royally appointed governor. Now this was obviously people didn't 266 00:28:33.120 --> 00:28:37.160 take kindly to this. What are you doing? You're just going to take our local institutions 267 00:28:37.160 --> 00:28:42.760 and throw them in the garbage so that we can all, and plus making New York and New Jersey 268 00:28:42.760 --> 00:28:47.760 in the same organization, this is just not going to fly with anybody. 269 00:28:47.760 --> 00:28:52.260 Nobody wants to be in an organization with Rhode Island, either, because they're a bunch of... 270 00:28:52.260 --> 00:28:56.260 The colonial view of Rhode Island the whole time was they were a bunch of freaks to stay away from them. 271 00:28:56.260 --> 00:29:01.260 They were called Rogue Island. When they didn't send any representatives to the Constitutional Convention, 272 00:29:01.260 --> 00:29:06.260 people were happy. Well, good. We were just being polite. 273 00:29:06.260 --> 00:29:10.760 But anyway, so James II established this dominion of New England, 274 00:29:10.760 --> 00:29:15.800 And the colonists were just waiting for an opportunity to smash this thing. 275 00:29:15.800 --> 00:29:24.440 And in particular, it would have been difficult to keep them merged into this one royal government for very long, even in the best of circumstances. 276 00:29:24.440 --> 00:29:29.160 But it was Sir Edmund Andros who was sent over to be the royal governor of this new dominion. 277 00:29:29.160 --> 00:29:36.320 And of course, as you can hear from what I said, it included much more than what is today known as New England. 278 00:29:36.320 --> 00:29:40.880 Andros, for instance, would just levy taxes just by his own fiat, 279 00:29:40.880 --> 00:29:45.800 and if you protested this, he'd throw you in jail, and that grates on people after a while. 280 00:29:45.800 --> 00:29:48.000 You can't really keep doing that. 281 00:29:48.000 --> 00:29:52.360 And after the Glorious Revolution, and of course, there are no fax machines, 282 00:29:52.360 --> 00:29:54.960 so it takes a while for the colonies to find out what's happened. 283 00:29:54.960 --> 00:29:58.640 There's a completely new regime in England. 284 00:29:58.640 --> 00:30:03.320 They get word in Boston that the new King and Queen, William and Mary, 285 00:30:03.320 --> 00:30:09.320 They wanted all magistrates who have been unjustly turned out to resume their former employment. 286 00:30:09.320 --> 00:30:15.320 That is to say, allow the colonies to reestablish their governments. 287 00:30:15.320 --> 00:30:21.320 As Borsten puts it, the machine-like precision with which this parallel revolution unrolled 288 00:30:21.320 --> 00:30:25.320 points to careful plans and leadership which no one has yet unearthed. 289 00:30:25.320 --> 00:30:28.320 The townspeople rose, the countryside rose, 290 00:30:28.320 --> 00:30:32.320 Andros and some of his principal counselors were thrown into jail. 291 00:30:32.320 --> 00:30:36.020 A meeting presided over by the last governor under the Bay Colony Charter 292 00:30:36.020 --> 00:30:39.820 adopted the Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants and Inhabitants 293 00:30:39.820 --> 00:30:42.320 that had been drawn up by Cotton Mather. 294 00:30:42.320 --> 00:30:46.320 And the dominion was at an end and self-rule was again in effect. 295 00:30:46.320 --> 00:30:48.920 It was this same spirit that led the colonists to reject 296 00:30:48.920 --> 00:30:53.120 Benjamin Franklin's proposed Albany Plan of Union in 1754. 297 00:30:53.120 --> 00:30:55.720 By the way, obviously all of you should own 298 00:30:55.720 --> 00:30:59.020 Murray Rothbard's Conceived in Liberty collection, four volumes. 299 00:30:59.020 --> 00:31:01.320 I've been nagging Jeff Tucker for years. 300 00:31:01.320 --> 00:31:03.920 I'd love to see this thing get put back into print. 301 00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:07.280 You know, I'm marking up the library copy, 302 00:31:07.280 --> 00:31:12.360 and I didn't really feel that guilty about that because I had to use it, 303 00:31:12.360 --> 00:31:15.160 and it's so useful. 304 00:31:15.160 --> 00:31:18.520 I mean, just imagine reading Murray Rothbard on colonial merit. 305 00:31:18.520 --> 00:31:21.640 He finds all the evil people and exposes them. 306 00:31:21.640 --> 00:31:25.000 He's the only historian who understands monetary history 307 00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:26.060 in the colonial period. 308 00:31:26.060 --> 00:31:28.740 All the other historians say, well, according to everyone, 309 00:31:28.740 --> 00:31:31.000 there was a shortage of species. 310 00:31:31.000 --> 00:31:33.000 So therefore they needed paper money. 311 00:31:33.000 --> 00:31:36.200 You just think, well, I'm pleading with you people. 312 00:31:36.200 --> 00:31:38.500 And also one of the great things is his portrayal 313 00:31:38.500 --> 00:31:40.000 of Benjamin Franklin. 314 00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:42.800 He's withering, Murray's withering on Benjamin Franklin. 315 00:31:42.800 --> 00:31:43.760 He's a big jerk. 316 00:31:43.760 --> 00:31:47.320 He goes along with all these, all these British, you know, 317 00:31:47.320 --> 00:31:49.040 he recommends to one of his friends, 318 00:31:49.040 --> 00:31:51.500 oh, you should become a stamp tax agent. 319 00:31:51.500 --> 00:31:53.400 What is wrong with you? 320 00:31:53.400 --> 00:31:55.640 Or he's in favor of paper money inflation 321 00:31:55.640 --> 00:31:57.700 because it turns out, well, his print shop 322 00:31:57.700 --> 00:32:00.000 is gonna get the contract for the money. 323 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:05.680 What a classic Rothbardian find that fact is, you know, man, we knew it was a conspiracy all along. 324 00:32:05.680 --> 00:32:17.280 Well, anyway, Benjamin Franklin, under the pressure of Indian War, helped to drop a scheme according to which the colonies would yield a considerable amount of their authority to a new inter-colonial governing structure. 325 00:32:17.280 --> 00:32:22.640 How many colonial assemblies ratified this plan? Zero. So there is that spirit again. 326 00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:27.440 To heck with your confederations, we're concerned about them, we think they're a threat to our liberty. 327 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:34.440 So this is why I would argue that it's sort of misleading to say the traditional, the tradition of American liberty, you just start with the Constitution, you move forward. 328 00:32:34.440 --> 00:32:44.440 In fact, you know, of course, we all know the Constitution probably step back, step away, you know, I have seven different hats on the Constitution, depending on where I am. 329 00:32:44.440 --> 00:32:52.440 If I'm talking to Hillary Clinton, I'm very pro-Constitution, but when I'm with this crowd, you know, ah, throw it out, who needs? 330 00:32:52.440 --> 00:33:01.440 Anyway, at the time of the framing of the Constitution, which sort of brings up, that's about the boundary of my talk, 331 00:33:01.440 --> 00:33:08.440 and the formation of an allegedly more perfect union, the colonists had precedents for challenging the powers of a confederation, 332 00:33:08.440 --> 00:33:15.440 as in the case of the Confederation of New England, for rejecting a confederation, as in the case of the Albany Plan of Union, 333 00:33:15.440 --> 00:33:20.440 and for bringing down a confederation by force, as in the case of the Dominion of New England. 334 00:33:20.440 --> 00:33:37.440 So it can hardly be surprising, therefore, that at the time, to learn that at the time of the ratification of the Constitution, three states, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island, in exceeding to the new confederation, explicitly reserved the right to withdraw from the new union. 335 00:33:37.440 --> 00:33:43.440 And as Virginia said, when so ever the same shall be perverted to her injury or oppression. 336 00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:47.440 Apparently that hasn't happened yet in New York. They love it, I guess, or something, I don't know. 337 00:33:47.440 --> 00:33:55.440 In so doing, they were only exercising the vigilance and libertarian principle that had animated the American experience during the colonial period. 338 00:33:55.440 --> 00:34:07.440 So what we see from the colonial period, and the basic lesson it has to teach us, is that really the classic American sentiment is not Andrew Jackson's famous toast. 339 00:34:07.440 --> 00:34:13.900 Post, Our Federal Union, it must be preserved, but John C. Calhoun's beautiful reply, The 340 00:34:13.900 --> 00:34:18.000 Union Next to Our Liberties, Most Dear. 341 00:34:18.000 --> 00:34:21.200 Now that might sound like a nice way to end, boy, that's really dramatic, but I've got 342 00:34:21.200 --> 00:34:23.880 78 other things to say, so I'm going to move on. 343 00:34:23.880 --> 00:34:28.120 It would have been a great ending, but now I had to talk about, it was the ending, I 344 00:34:28.120 --> 00:34:31.000 think, for something else that I did, but now we've talked about things having to do 345 00:34:31.000 --> 00:34:32.000 with the revolution. 346 00:34:32.000 --> 00:34:35.000 Now obviously the revolution, good, I think I got, I don't know, 17 minutes and I got 347 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.960 Leave some time for questions. So a few themes that might be useful when looking 348 00:34:39.960 --> 00:34:44.520 at the revolution. And then the question is, is it a revolution? Is it just a war 349 00:34:44.520 --> 00:34:48.400 for independence? Was it radical? Was it conservative? I'll give a few thoughts on 350 00:34:48.400 --> 00:34:54.200 this. I think for me the most impressive thing when you study the years leading 351 00:34:54.200 --> 00:34:58.480 up to the colonists decision to make the break with Britain is the level of 352 00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:01.960 sophistication of some of some of their arguments. I mean you know sometimes 353 00:35:01.960 --> 00:35:07.400 Sometimes they're right, sometimes they're wrong, but they're dealing with very profound 354 00:35:07.400 --> 00:35:09.560 issues in many cases. 355 00:35:09.560 --> 00:35:14.120 So for instance, 1761, and this is long before people had thought about making a break with 356 00:35:14.120 --> 00:35:19.280 England, but we all remember about James Otis talking about the general writs of assistance, 357 00:35:19.280 --> 00:35:24.640 which were in a sense search warrants that you could get with practically no evidence 358 00:35:24.640 --> 00:35:28.520 and just barge into people's homes to check to see if they're smuggling. 359 00:35:28.520 --> 00:35:35.880 James Otis stood up and spoke out against this, the renewal of the writs of assistance. 360 00:35:35.880 --> 00:35:43.080 And this is sort of significant. The colonists were totally against the writs of assistance, 361 00:35:43.080 --> 00:35:47.000 partly because they were completely guilty. I mean, they're all smuggling. They're smuggling 362 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:50.440 like there's no tomorrow. So, of course, they don't want somebody to come into my home. 363 00:35:50.440 --> 00:35:55.720 I got all the, you know, whatever I'm not supposed to have. There's that. But also, 364 00:35:55.720 --> 00:36:07.720 Also, the fairly sophisticated argument that Otis is making has to do with what does it mean for something to be constitutional when you don't have a written document, as, of course, the British have an unwritten constitution. 365 00:36:07.720 --> 00:36:20.720 Is something constitutional simply because Parliament says it is, hence legal positivism, or does it have to conform to some accumulated set of traditions and common practices and customs? 366 00:36:20.720 --> 00:36:25.560 And the latter position, of course, was the American one. 367 00:36:25.560 --> 00:36:28.640 But of course, Parliament would often say, well, we approved it. 368 00:36:28.640 --> 00:36:30.560 Where's the room for argument? 369 00:36:30.560 --> 00:36:32.360 Where's the further need for argument? 370 00:36:32.360 --> 00:36:34.200 This is a very interesting issue. 371 00:36:34.200 --> 00:36:37.400 And Otis is not successful. 372 00:36:37.400 --> 00:36:39.520 But this is the type of thing that Sam Adams, who's 373 00:36:39.520 --> 00:36:43.760 sort of the poor man's James Otis, can popularize issues 374 00:36:43.760 --> 00:36:46.240 like this and explain them to ordinary people. 375 00:36:46.240 --> 00:36:49.600 Now today, I think it would take about three hours 376 00:36:49.600 --> 00:36:52.240 to explain this idea to people. 377 00:36:52.240 --> 00:36:54.760 But at the time, people read, they're interested in things, 378 00:36:54.760 --> 00:36:58.080 they discuss things in taverns, and so on. 379 00:36:58.080 --> 00:37:02.760 Another thing is, for instance, 1764, the American Revenue Act, 380 00:37:02.760 --> 00:37:04.760 sometimes known as the Sugar Act. 381 00:37:04.760 --> 00:37:08.160 Now, there are many reasons that Americans 382 00:37:08.160 --> 00:37:10.120 might have been against this act. 383 00:37:10.120 --> 00:37:12.000 And I don't have time to go into all of them, 384 00:37:12.000 --> 00:37:14.880 but in Murray Rothbard's book, there's 385 00:37:14.880 --> 00:37:18.640 fantastic treatment of this particular act. 386 00:37:18.640 --> 00:37:35.640 But I would just note one thing. We all know, and I think it was Dr. Higgs who pointed this out in the first talk, that the British had imposed a series of trade regulations that would pertain to colonial trade for the purpose of enriching the mother country, frankly. 387 00:37:35.640 --> 00:37:45.640 And what's notable is that in principle, you don't really see the colonists in principle opposing that. In practice they oppose it, they just smuggle and they just ignore it. 388 00:37:45.640 --> 00:37:53.640 In principle, they say, the British government has the authority to regulate the trade on behalf of the good of the mother country. 389 00:37:53.640 --> 00:37:56.640 In principle, that's basically their position. 390 00:37:56.640 --> 00:38:05.640 Now, in this American Revenue Act, another thing you also know is that for a long time, a lot of these regulations had just not been enforced very well. 391 00:38:05.640 --> 00:38:08.640 They just looked the other way, and so on. 392 00:38:08.640 --> 00:38:18.640 Well, one of the things we see in this American Revenue Act is that up till now, there had been an absolutely prohibitive tariff on molasses from the French and Dutch West Indies. 393 00:38:18.640 --> 00:38:24.640 You get your molasses from the British West Indies, and you obviously see why they would do that. 394 00:38:24.640 --> 00:38:36.640 Well, as a result, in 1764, the American Revenue Act actually lowered the tariff on foreign molasses considerably, and yet the colonists were furious at this. 395 00:38:36.640 --> 00:38:42.640 Now, this is something, you know, you would just think, most people would just wonder why would you be upset about lowering a tariff. 396 00:38:42.640 --> 00:38:45.640 But notice the principle that's involved here. 397 00:38:45.640 --> 00:38:48.640 Nobody paid the tariff when it was a million percent. 398 00:38:48.640 --> 00:38:51.640 I mean, nobody paid a hundred percent tariff. Nobody was paying that. 399 00:38:51.640 --> 00:38:54.640 And it was not really bringing in revenue. 400 00:38:54.640 --> 00:38:59.640 In fact, the British trade regulations, it cost them, up to about 1764, 401 00:38:59.640 --> 00:39:05.640 it was costing the British government on the order of four times as much to enforce the trade regulations 402 00:39:05.640 --> 00:39:08.000 as they got in revenues from the tariffs collected. 403 00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:11.320 So it wasn't meant to be a source of revenue for the British government. 404 00:39:11.320 --> 00:39:16.040 But if you lower the tariff, it might make it possible or reasonable for some people to 405 00:39:16.040 --> 00:39:22.040 pay that tariff, to purchase the formal assets and pay the tariff, and therefore become a 406 00:39:22.040 --> 00:39:23.740 source of revenue for the British government. 407 00:39:23.740 --> 00:39:26.600 So suddenly now, it seems like it's a nice thing. 408 00:39:26.600 --> 00:39:27.600 They're playing nice. 409 00:39:27.600 --> 00:39:28.600 They're lowering the tariff. 410 00:39:28.600 --> 00:39:32.280 But in fact, it's a sneaky way of engaging in taxation without representation. 411 00:39:32.280 --> 00:39:33.280 Now that's great. 412 00:39:33.280 --> 00:39:38.680 You know, that's great! What a sophisticated argument that is, in my opinion. 413 00:39:38.680 --> 00:39:42.880 And again, it's something that you think would just, whoosh, over most people's heads. 414 00:39:42.880 --> 00:39:46.280 As far as I can see, the tariff is lower. 415 00:39:46.280 --> 00:39:51.080 And that's what, you know, Tom Brokaw says is lower, so I guess, uh... 416 00:39:51.080 --> 00:39:55.280 I always tell my students to rile them up that, you know, this, and I don't single them out, 417 00:39:55.280 --> 00:40:01.880 but I say, the American population today is exactly the type of people King George III would love to have dealt with. 418 00:40:01.880 --> 00:40:04.920 They do as little as possible, they don't learn anything, 419 00:40:04.920 --> 00:40:08.840 they speak in slogans that, you know, on bumper stickers or in the newspaper. 420 00:40:08.840 --> 00:40:10.800 Beautiful, beautiful. 421 00:40:10.800 --> 00:40:14.200 You know, I mean, I could just imagine King George III coming up with a slogan, 422 00:40:14.200 --> 00:40:17.800 the king is your friend, and then going up to people and saying, 423 00:40:17.800 --> 00:40:19.600 oh my gosh, look at what they're doing. 424 00:40:19.600 --> 00:40:22.600 Yeah, but the king is our friend. 425 00:40:22.600 --> 00:40:27.280 Oh, gosh. Anyway, 1767, one more example. 426 00:40:27.280 --> 00:40:30.560 The, what do you call it, the Townshend Acts had to do, 427 00:40:30.560 --> 00:40:39.560 Well, there are several things involved with them, but in this case you've got tariffs imposed on lead, paper, paint, glass and tea. 428 00:40:39.560 --> 00:40:44.560 Now obviously the items themselves are not that significant, but what is significant is, 429 00:40:44.560 --> 00:40:54.560 all right, you've got another taxation issue and there are issues related to that, but what were the British going to do with the revenue they got from these particular taxes? 430 00:40:54.560 --> 00:41:00.880 was of even greater significance because up till now, many of the colonies had royal governors, 431 00:41:00.880 --> 00:41:05.360 royally appointed governors. That was the way that England could keep a kind of a hand 432 00:41:05.360 --> 00:41:14.200 in these governments. But the colonial legislatures retained the right to pay the governor's salary. 433 00:41:14.200 --> 00:41:18.240 So if the governor got out of line, you would just threaten not to pay his salary. And you'd 434 00:41:18.240 --> 00:41:23.680 be amazed at how quickly they would turn around on issues like this. Well, one of the things 435 00:41:23.680 --> 00:41:29.680 The reason why this is going to be done with these tariffs is that the British would take the revenue and pay the governor's salaries with it. 436 00:41:29.680 --> 00:41:37.680 So that the one restraint that remained to the colonists would be violently destroyed. 437 00:41:37.680 --> 00:41:40.680 And now they would have really no control over these governors. 438 00:41:40.680 --> 00:41:45.680 Now these are, you know, this isn't just, well they raised some taxes and the colonies didn't like it. 439 00:41:45.680 --> 00:41:47.680 Okay, that's true, that's true. 440 00:41:47.680 --> 00:41:57.680 but all these issues are, you know, they show really good functioning minds and these are issues that were being popularized for ordinary people 441 00:41:57.680 --> 00:42:03.680 and yet in each case, and this is where I think maybe I differ a little bit from Murray Rothbard and I hate to do this 442 00:42:03.680 --> 00:42:10.680 but in this case there's always this question of is the American Revolution a radical event or a conservative event 443 00:42:10.680 --> 00:42:16.680 because you get the Russell Kirk's of the world and you know I'm sure he has his fine qualities, Russell Kirk 444 00:42:16.680 --> 00:42:20.880 It seems like every book... I don't know if this is being recorded or not, but who cares? 445 00:42:20.880 --> 00:42:26.480 Every book is the same thing. You know, like, you can't have liberty without order. Okay, I got you. 446 00:42:26.480 --> 00:42:31.880 And they would say that it was conservative because... 447 00:42:31.880 --> 00:42:36.280 Well, actually, let's hold that up. There was another argument that the American Revolution was actually rather radical. 448 00:42:36.280 --> 00:42:41.480 And some of the things you might cite in this regard were the fact that by percentage of the population, 449 00:42:41.480 --> 00:42:46.380 there were actually, in a sense, more emigres in the American Revolution than in the French one. 450 00:42:46.380 --> 00:42:50.380 People who just had to flee to get out, people who were British loyalists and so on, 451 00:42:50.380 --> 00:42:53.380 and that indicates a certain spirit of radicalism. 452 00:42:53.380 --> 00:42:56.380 But notice in each of the cases that I've mentioned here, 453 00:42:56.380 --> 00:42:58.380 and I didn't just pick these because they work, 454 00:42:58.380 --> 00:43:01.380 all the cases basically follow this model, 455 00:43:01.380 --> 00:43:03.380 what are the colonists really upset about? 456 00:43:03.380 --> 00:43:08.380 They're upset that in each case the British are guilty of an innovation. 457 00:43:08.380 --> 00:43:12.380 The colonists are the ones who want to continue along the traditional path 458 00:43:12.380 --> 00:43:15.380 of self-government, the traditional rights of Englishmen, 459 00:43:15.380 --> 00:43:23.380 The British are guilty of doing something new, of engaging in innovation. 460 00:43:23.380 --> 00:43:29.380 That's very different. That's why I tend to think that it is a conservative event in the best sense of the word conservative. 461 00:43:29.380 --> 00:43:33.380 Conserve good things. These rights that they had were good things. 462 00:43:33.380 --> 00:43:41.380 That's why I come down on this side of things, because on the other hand, if you look at the French Revolution, 463 00:43:41.380 --> 00:43:45.660 that's just innovation after innovation after innovation and there's no logical 464 00:43:45.660 --> 00:43:48.760 stopping point you can always keep innovating whereas the the American 465 00:43:48.760 --> 00:43:53.220 Revolution when it's over it's over you know and that's that's anyway that's 466 00:43:53.220 --> 00:43:57.500 that's my my take on all this the final thing I would I would note and and the 467 00:43:57.500 --> 00:44:00.140 thing and the more I read Murray Rothbard's take on this the more I think 468 00:44:00.140 --> 00:44:04.180 this may just be a semantic some of this is just a semantic difference but I want 469 00:44:04.180 --> 00:44:07.180 to say I think I've got a little just a few more minutes we start a few minutes 470 00:44:07.180 --> 00:44:13.180 I know we want to stay on schedule, but it's very kind of you, sir. I appreciate that. 471 00:44:13.180 --> 00:44:19.180 I want to just put a couple things on. I haven't used this whiteboard once, and let's use that. 472 00:44:19.180 --> 00:44:23.180 It's a crying shame, but there's one more point I want to make, 473 00:44:23.180 --> 00:44:28.180 and plus this will be a beautiful segue into Professor Livingston's talk, I assume. 474 00:44:28.180 --> 00:44:35.180 And that is this. I want to just show very, very ridiculously briefly one more point 475 00:44:35.180 --> 00:44:40.940 And how the colonial period and the revolutionary years can be brought to bear to settle a very, 476 00:44:40.940 --> 00:44:45.900 very important historical dispute that has gone on since probably the 1830s. 477 00:44:45.900 --> 00:44:48.880 Now I don't know, again, what the relative level of knowledge is here. 478 00:44:48.880 --> 00:44:50.560 Some of you may be experts on this. 479 00:44:50.560 --> 00:44:52.860 Some of you may never have heard about this before. 480 00:44:52.860 --> 00:44:59.420 But really beginning about the 1830s, in a systematic way, you start to see two different 481 00:44:59.420 --> 00:45:04.340 schools of thought trying to explain what is the nature of the American Union. 482 00:45:04.340 --> 00:45:08.240 You have what might be referred to as a nationalist school and you have what might be referred 483 00:45:08.240 --> 00:45:10.240 to as a compact school. 484 00:45:10.240 --> 00:45:22.740 So here we go, put them on the board. 485 00:45:22.740 --> 00:45:26.940 And basically the question that comes up here is, when the United States becomes the United 486 00:45:26.940 --> 00:45:32.980 States, when the Constitution is formed beyond, even before the Constitution, what do we have 487 00:45:32.980 --> 00:45:33.980 on our hands here? 488 00:45:33.980 --> 00:45:41.980 Do we have a single people taken in the aggregate, the American people, and they founded the United States, and it's one and indivisible? 489 00:45:41.980 --> 00:45:49.980 Or do we have a series of independent states coming together to form a confederation that's these people? 490 00:45:49.980 --> 00:46:00.980 Now, it's true, if you look in the Constitution, well, it's true that you can see the words, 491 00:46:00.980 --> 00:46:09.980 We, the people, do ordain and establish, and it looks like, well, the people of the United States did it, so I guess these people win. 492 00:46:09.980 --> 00:46:16.980 The nationalist people, by the way, that argument totally doesn't work. It's the only argument they have and it totally doesn't work, but you can ask me about that later. 493 00:46:16.980 --> 00:46:24.980 These people, who are these people? Who are the guilty parties? From Massachusetts, my home. 494 00:46:24.980 --> 00:46:32.980 Everything's named after Daniel Webster. Take the Daniel Webster Highway and then pass the Daniel Webster Liberty Tree and then turn right on it. 495 00:46:32.980 --> 00:46:41.980 Then there's Joseph Story, great jurist. He's telling kind of a story. 496 00:46:41.980 --> 00:46:43.980 And finally... 497 00:46:50.980 --> 00:46:52.980 I don't know how you people feel about Lincoln. 498 00:46:56.980 --> 00:46:58.980 That's supposed to be a skull and crossbones. 499 00:46:59.980 --> 00:47:04.980 Just give me a few minutes, and if you have a question, I'll try to take one question at the end, or you can see me afterwards. 500 00:47:04.980 --> 00:47:08.980 On the other hand, you've got great people. You're totally thrilled to be siding with them. 501 00:47:08.980 --> 00:47:16.980 Thomas Jefferson 502 00:47:16.980 --> 00:47:24.980 Calhoun 503 00:47:24.980 --> 00:47:32.980 Abel Upshur 504 00:47:32.980 --> 00:47:42.980 A Brief Inquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government 505 00:48:02.980 --> 00:48:12.980 and why does this matter? What are the practical consequences of what might seem a fairly obscure issue of political theory? 506 00:48:12.980 --> 00:48:22.980 And the answer is this, obviously, if you view the United States as being a compact among states, then you're much more likely, 507 00:48:22.980 --> 00:48:28.980 it makes much more logical sense, to support things like nullification, which is an issue I don't have time to get into, 508 00:48:28.980 --> 00:48:35.980 or secession, because, for instance, Lincoln, who holds this other view that it's just one big unbreakable hole, 509 00:48:35.980 --> 00:48:41.980 for Lincoln, secession is just an arbitrary, states are just sort of arbitrary lines around an arbitrary group of people, 510 00:48:41.980 --> 00:48:48.980 and so if a state secedes, Lincoln sees this as treason of one part of an unbreakable hole breaking away, 511 00:48:48.980 --> 00:48:57.980 whereas these people see this as the supreme act of sovereignty, of a sovereign state withdrawing from a confederation 512 00:48:57.980 --> 00:49:00.260 and Federation that it joined. 513 00:49:00.260 --> 00:49:02.300 Well, throughout the whole colonial period, 514 00:49:02.300 --> 00:49:04.740 now obviously you can go into much more depth about this, 515 00:49:04.740 --> 00:49:07.660 but the whole colonial period totally vindicates 516 00:49:07.660 --> 00:49:10.020 these people, it completely vindicates them. 517 00:49:10.020 --> 00:49:14.260 Story in his book on the subject goes completely overboard 518 00:49:14.260 --> 00:49:16.420 and says that the Americans have been one people 519 00:49:16.420 --> 00:49:17.780 since the colonial period. 520 00:49:17.780 --> 00:49:19.900 They've been one people, just one people. 521 00:49:19.900 --> 00:49:22.700 Well, let me just read very quickly, very, very quickly, 522 00:49:22.700 --> 00:49:24.220 just a little bit from Abel Upshur, 523 00:49:24.220 --> 00:49:37.740 The colonial governments were clothed with the sovereign power of making laws and of enforcing obedience to them from their own people. 524 00:49:37.740 --> 00:49:43.500 The people of one colony owed no allegiance to the government of any other colony and were not bound by its laws. 525 00:49:43.500 --> 00:49:49.180 The colonies had no common legislature, no common treasury, no common military power, no common judiciary. 526 00:49:49.180 --> 00:49:52.620 The people of one colony were not liable to pay taxes to any other, 527 00:49:52.620 --> 00:49:58.220 nor to bear arms in its defense, they had no right to vote in its elections, etc., etc., etc., etc. 528 00:49:58.220 --> 00:50:03.820 And there's just so many more things that... And he goes on and on and on. 529 00:50:03.820 --> 00:50:10.300 For instance, suppose there had been one colony that had not gone along with the Declaration of Independence. 530 00:50:10.300 --> 00:50:14.700 Would the other colonies, does anybody think the other colonies would have had the right 531 00:50:14.700 --> 00:50:18.620 to coerce that colony because, hey, you're one people with us, 532 00:50:18.620 --> 00:50:20.820 You've got to join with us against the British. 533 00:50:20.820 --> 00:50:22.820 You know, no one says that. 534 00:50:22.820 --> 00:50:26.020 Now, the other colonies may well have viewed that one as their enemy, 535 00:50:26.020 --> 00:50:28.820 but they would have had no right to accuse it of treason. 536 00:50:28.820 --> 00:50:32.220 That colony would have been in the same position as Canada 537 00:50:32.220 --> 00:50:34.820 in the midst of this, in the midst of all this. 538 00:50:34.820 --> 00:50:39.020 And there are so many arguments that these folks make, but none of them work. 539 00:50:39.020 --> 00:50:42.020 And the final thing I would just note very quickly is 540 00:50:42.020 --> 00:50:53.320 Even the Continental Congress, which during the Revolutionary War, there was kind of a national government, sort of, 541 00:50:53.320 --> 00:51:00.520 but it was something that was established for practical purposes, had no authority to force the states to do anything, 542 00:51:00.520 --> 00:51:10.020 depended on the subsequent ratification of its acts on the states, and that is sometimes cited as well. 543 00:51:10.020 --> 00:51:12.580 Well, they were one people, they had this government. 544 00:51:12.580 --> 00:51:19.620 Well, the colonies, nevertheless, were engaging in acts of sovereignty all this time. 545 00:51:19.620 --> 00:51:24.140 Ticonderoga was taken by the troops of Connecticut before the Declaration of Independence. 546 00:51:24.140 --> 00:51:28.620 Massachusetts and Connecticut fitted out armed vessels to cruise against those of England 547 00:51:28.620 --> 00:51:29.620 in 1775. 548 00:51:29.620 --> 00:51:31.620 South Carolina followed their example. 549 00:51:31.620 --> 00:51:35.780 And even in treaties and everything, especially in the provisional articles with Great Britain 550 00:51:35.780 --> 00:51:39.780 in 1782, by which our independence was acknowledged, proceeded upon this same idea, and this is 551 00:51:39.780 --> 00:51:51.780 This is my final point. His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States to wit New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and lists them all, each to be a free, sovereign and independent state. 552 00:51:51.780 --> 00:51:58.780 So the British acknowledge that they were dealing with the common agent of 13 independent sovereignties. 553 00:51:58.780 --> 00:52:04.780 There is no mystical, because all these people have to rely on is emotion and mysticism. 554 00:52:04.780 --> 00:52:05.780 and Socialism. 555 00:52:05.780 --> 00:52:06.780 Oh, we've always been all one people. 556 00:52:06.780 --> 00:52:12.220 But then you actually bring law to them, and that's just seen as being very pedestrian. 557 00:52:12.220 --> 00:52:14.100 How could you actually give us legal arguments? 558 00:52:14.100 --> 00:52:15.300 We've all been one people. 559 00:52:15.300 --> 00:52:19.700 This is all crazy stuff, and it has a lot to do with, I think, the artificiality that 560 00:52:19.700 --> 00:52:22.660 Professor Livingston talked about when he talked about the modern state. 561 00:52:22.660 --> 00:52:23.940 You have these people to thank for that. 562 00:52:23.940 --> 00:52:27.180 I wish I didn't have to rush through this so much, but I think I've already gone over 563 00:52:27.180 --> 00:52:28.180 a minute. 564 00:52:28.180 --> 00:52:29.180 I'm sorry. 565 00:52:29.180 --> 00:52:30.180 I don't know what happens to me. 566 00:52:30.180 --> 00:52:31.420 I'll take one less minute next time. 567 00:52:31.420 --> 00:52:32.420 But what happens here? 568 00:52:32.420 --> 00:52:33.420 Do I take questions? 569 00:52:33.420 --> 00:52:53.420 Okay, except in passing you didn't mention much about the Declaration of Independence, nor natural law, and how much this helped shape the future nation. 570 00:53:03.420 --> 00:53:06.420 and the Declaration and the various ways that people have interpreted it. 571 00:53:06.420 --> 00:53:09.420 It didn't occur to author Schlesinger either. 572 00:53:09.420 --> 00:53:12.420 Yeah, yeah, well, you know, surprise. 573 00:53:12.420 --> 00:53:18.420 But Professor Higgs was telling me earlier that there are a couple of very interesting books that have just come out. 574 00:53:18.420 --> 00:53:24.420 One of them is a series of essays on kind of an intellectual exploration of the Declaration. 575 00:53:24.420 --> 00:53:27.420 I can't remember the... he can tell us about that later. 576 00:53:27.420 --> 00:53:31.420 But I mean, off the top of my head, it's hard to give a quick answer 577 00:53:31.420 --> 00:53:59.420 You're talking about the radical versus conservative argument, perhaps one of the reasons that the revolution might appear radical is because it's so radical in the mainstream of the state that it's not making progress today. 578 00:53:59.420 --> 00:54:02.420 Even what's concerning them right now. 579 00:54:29.420 --> 00:54:31.420 but you know we started a little late. Thank you.